“Yes, I do; but we’ll see.”
There was a comely determination on her lip, very
pleasant to a beholder who was neither bishop, priest,
nor deacon. “I think I can manage any vicar’s
views about me if he’s under forty.”

Dick rather wished she had never thought of managing
vicars.

“I certainly shall be glad to get some of your
delicious tea,” he said in rather a free way,
yet modestly, as became one in a position between that
of visitor and inmate, and looking wistfully at his
lonely saucer.

“So shall I. Now is there anything else we
want, Mr Dewy?”

“I really think there’s nothing else,
Miss Day.”

She prepared to sit down, looking musingly out of
the window at Smart’s enjoyment of the rich
grass. “Nobody seems to care about me,”
she murmured, with large lost eyes fixed upon the
sky beyond Smart.

“Perhaps Mr. Shiner does,” said Dick,
in the tone of a slightly injured man.

“Yes, I forgot—­he does, I know.”
Dick precipitately regretted that he had suggested
Shiner, since it had produced such a miserable result
as this.

“I’ll warrant you’ll care for somebody
very much indeed another day, won’t you, Mr.
Dewy?” she continued, looking very feelingly
into the mathematical centre of his eyes.

“Ah, I’ll warrant I shall,” said
Dick, feelingly too, and looking back into her dark
pupils, whereupon they were turned aside.

“I meant,” she went on, preventing him
from speaking just as he was going to narrate a forcible
story about his feelings; “I meant that nobody
comes to see if I have returned—­not even
the vicar.”

“If you want to see him, I’ll call at
the vicarage directly we have had some tea.”

“No, no! Don’t let him come down
here, whatever you do, whilst I am in such a state
of disarrangement. Parsons look so miserable
and awkward when one’s house is in a muddle;
walking about, and making impossible suggestions in
quaint academic phrases till your flesh creeps and
you wish them dead. Do you take sugar?”

Mr. Maybold was at this instant seen coming up the
path.

“There! That’s he coming!
How I wish you were not here!—­that is, how
awkward—­dear, dear!” she exclaimed,
with a quick ascent of blood to her face, and irritated
with Dick rather than the vicar, as it seemed.

“Pray don’t be alarmed on my account,
Miss Day—­good-afternoon!” said Dick
in a huff, putting on his hat, and leaving the room
hastily by the back-door.

The horse was caught and put in, and on mounting the
shafts to start he saw through the window the vicar,
standing upon some books piled in a chair, and driving
a nail into the wall; Fancy, with a demure glance,
holding the canary-cage up to him, as if she had never
in her life thought of anything but vicars and canaries.